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Vishal Khairnar
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Michael Rider’s Confident Celine Debut at Paris Men’s Fashion Week
Few debuts have landed with the confidence and clarity of Michael Rider’s first collection for Celine, unveiled during Paris Men’s Fashion Week on Sunday. Presented co-ed inside Celine’s historic 16 Rue Vivienne atelier, the debut treated the house’s heritage not as a relic, but as a living archive.
Rider’s formula was sharp: combine Phoebe Philo’s pragmatic minimalism with Hedi Slimane’s razor-edged bourgeois swagger—and the result was a wardrobe that felt commercially astute without ever cynical.
📈 Continuity as Competitive Strategy
Rider inherits a label that soared under Slimane, doubling sales to an estimated €2.5 billion, with accessories, menswear, and fragrances now key profit engines. Instead of tearing down, Rider opted for continuity:
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New Triomphe bags
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Weightier jewellery and vermeil
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Playful logo tees
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Low-to-the-ground loafers
These are all high-volume categories, ensuring product-driven stability at a time when soft luxury demand is forecasted to grow only in low single digits in 2025.
✒️ Less Erasure, More Annotation
Unlike houses that swing through rapid logo shifts, Rider respected Slimane’s rebrand—keeping the accent-free Celine logotype intact. This decision underscores the value of brand equity consistency in a market wary of costly resets.
By contrast, Burberry shifted from Peter Saville’s Helvetica block to Daniel Lee’s calligraphy in just five years, while Balenciaga stripped its mark to stark minimalism back in 2017. Rider’s decision signals a steady hand: evolution, not revolution.
🧵 The Collection: Heritage Reimagined
The clothes themselves proved Rider’s ability to merge commercial stewardship with creativity:
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Long coats, both double and single-breasted, evoked Philo’s cultish ease.
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Skinny stovepipe trousers under tailoring nodded to Slimane’s rock-bourgeois DNA.
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Accessories—especially new bag silhouettes—emerged as the collection’s strongest hook for shoppers.
The overall effect was familiar yet fresh—lean silhouettes with softened edges, pragmatic yet aspirational.
💡 A Strategy for the Times
Rider’s debut underscores a truth of today’s luxury landscape: heritage houses inside conglomerates like LVMH prioritize stability over rupture. With LVMH’s 2024 results showing fashion and leather goods pulling in €41 billion on flat organic growth, the appetite for high-risk resets is low.
In this context, Rider’s “evolution, not erasure” strategy feels as contemporary as the silhouettes themselves. He proved that a debut can be measured yet memorable—a balancing act between brand heritage and the hard realities of the luxury market.
